Post by Marta on Mar 2, 2018 22:49:23 GMT 9

Feeling inspired and motivated by all the great threads in this part of the forum, and needing some accountability to keep our ml strong, I've decided to log here our ups and downs on our family bilingual journey.

We are a family of 5: me, my husband and our three kids, 9, 5 and 2. I come from Spain and I moved to Germany after finishing college, my husband is German (but speaks very good Spanish) and we live in Germany. Our three kids were born here and go (or will go in the case of the two younger ones) to normal German school. My older son does attend a native Spanish class once a week from the time he started school.

My goal is for my children to have a Spanish level of a child their age in Spain, both spoken and written.

I always have tons of ideas that I want to implement but a lot of them stay in the "idea" phase for a long time and I'm hoping that posting here will help me implement more of those ideas.

My main goals now are:

- For my 9 year old, to keep his Spanish strong as German is becoming stronger and stronger through school. So far I feel very happy with his level, but I know I have to keep up the efforts. I would also like to start working a little on his English skills, which he has as a foreign language in school.

- For my 5 year old, she will start school in the summer and I would like her to be able to read in Spanish before that. Even though I am also happy with her Spanish level, I feel her Spanish is not as strong as her older brother (for example, he always talks to me in Spanish, no matter what, but she has no problem talking to me in German if she feels like it), and I think it would be great if she can read in Spanish before she starts with German in school.

- For the 2 year old, even though he attends German kindergarten, I would say his stronger language is still Spanish.

Post by Carrie on Mar 3, 2018 12:26:07 GMT 9

I always have tons of ideas that I want to implement but a lot of them stay in the "idea" phase for a long time and I'm hoping that posting here will help me implement more of those ideas.

Welcome Marta!

That sounds exactly like me, and trying to get out of the "idea" phase is one of the reasons I started doing the challenges monthly!

So glad you're here! I taught my daughter to read in our ml (Spanish) before she learned in our ML (English), and I have never regretted doing it in that order. I think it really gave her a boost in the ml.

Post by Marta on Mar 3, 2018 16:28:05 GMT 9

Thanks Carrie If you have any tips on how to teach my daughter to read, they are most welcome.

My son could read in Spanish before starting school but somehow I never really "taught" him. He started looking at the text during our read alouds and would ask what does it say here now and then, then I started asking him at the beginning of each chapter we were reading if he could read the title and I helped him when he couldn't and then he could read in Spanish. He still follows the text when I read aloud to him and points out if I ever make any mistakes.

My daughter is very different and she's not so interested in read alouds as his brother was/is (although she's starting now which makes me very happy ) and she's also not so interested in learning to read. But I think in her case it's even more important than it was for her brother to learn before the ML comes.

Post by Amy on Mar 3, 2018 22:02:47 GMT 9

Welcome to this challenge Marta!

I have not doubt that -like the rest of us who have a Track your progress thread- you will almost become addicted to the accountability you derive from it It is brilliant to put down these ideas that swarm in your mind, and work the best way to put them into practice. And obviously it will also be brilliant to track the progress of your kids.

Enjoy!

Amy

***"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars" - Oscar Wilde***

Post by Raquel on Mar 6, 2018 20:02:15 GMT 9

Hi Marta! I'm glad you opened your own thread. Not only will it be helpful to you when you want to know how and when something happened in the past, but you'll be helping others and others will be able to help you better too, knowing the challenges you're facing at every step. It's also great with keeping you proactive and looking for things to improve.

Learning to read in Spanish is considered easy compared to other languages; you learn the sounds and then blend them. I say it's easy because most letters sound one way only, especially vowels, so that makes it much easier than, say, English. Traditionally, we learned to read by putting consonant and vowel together: "la P con la A, PA" (= P with A, "pa"), etc... My daughter is 4, and I see that so far they've learned all their letters and their sounds. They're supposed to learn to read next year, although many of her classmates can already read.

Post by Adam Beck on Mar 7, 2018 14:22:13 GMT 9

Feeling inspired and motivated by all the great threads in this part of the forum, and needing some accountability to keep our ml strong, I've decided to log here our ups and downs on our family bilingual journey.

Marta, I think you've just begun a great thread, too! Stick with this thread, and with your efforts, and I'm sure you'll achieve your aim of advancing your children's ability in Spanish (as well as their ability in English) at a strong and satisfying pace.

I look forward to following your posts here!

Adam Beck is the founder of Bilingual Monkeys and The Bilingual Zoo, and the author of the popular non-fiction book Maximize Your Child's Bilingual Ability amzn.to/22XKuCt and the humorous novel How I Lost My Ear amzn.to/2EsjVRS, both available worldwide.

Post by Marta on Mar 10, 2018 5:31:21 GMT 9

Thanks everyone for your tips and encouragement.

I didn't manage to do in our week as much as I wanted to, but I maybe I wanted too much.

On the positive, we kept our read alouds going well all week. I read to all three of them individually each day. My daughter who is 5, soon to be 6, was until now not so eager for read alouds of longer books. But we have started now with The Famous Five by Enid Blyton (read in our ml, Spanish) and it has been a great success. She's now following me around with the book and asking me to read it to her all the time, which makes me very happy.

We have also heard Spanish music on our car rides, plus some short stories, which my two younger ones have enjoyed. For the older one I gave him an mp3 player with some short stories in our ml and he was listening now and then to them during the week.

What I did not manage was to start the homework routine. With my older one it's hard to find the time during the week, since he has a lot of activities. But I asked him to write a short journal each day after dinner in our ml and he has done it every day.

I did not find the time either to start some learning-to-read activities with my daughter. I think the best approach with her would be some kind of game because she's not so interested in "school-like" activities.

For the little one, he speaks a lot of Spanish right now, which makes me very happy. When I was picking him from day care, one of his teachers told me he was teaching some Spanish words to them and indeed he does do that now at home a lot too saying "in Spanish it is X, in German Y". It's amazing to see how he can already understand that and "translate".

Post by Amy on Mar 10, 2018 6:58:00 GMT 9

Marta,

All these already sound like great achievements! Your eldest keeping his diary on his own, your daughter running after you for read-aloud time, and your little one chatting away in ml and teaching it to ML speakers. I think you should be very proud of your work!

Take it a step at a time. The weekend is here, and maybe you'll find the time to look up those reading activities you wanted for your daughter.

Amy

***"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars" - Oscar Wilde***

Post by Alison on Mar 10, 2018 18:31:16 GMT 9

I agree that this sounds like a lot is going well and you should be proud of the steps you have made. I think that it's more important to establish sustainable habits, even if they feel like small steps, than to start so many things that it becomes impossible to keep them going. It's very hard to do something if it feels like a big effort to remember to do it and to squeeze it into the time you have available. Once something becomes a habit it's much easier to keep it going and requires a lot less effort from you so then you have more energy and time to add in something new. Sometimes it feels like slow progress to us but it's amazing the big impact it can have to establish even a few small habits.

Post by Marta on Mar 11, 2018 22:17:39 GMT 9

Alison and Amy, thanks a lot for your encouragement and tips

I'm proud of our bilingual journey and of the ml level of my three kids, but on the other hand I know I have to keep working on it. I see it already with my son, who is now 9 and has already a lot of sports and activities in the ML, so the time he spends in ml is becoming less and less, so I somehow feel I need to develop new strategies to keep up the pace.

With the two younger ones (5 and 2), they do still spend a big chunk of their day with me, so their ml input is still big, but my daughter will start school in the summer, and her Spanish, although strong, is not as strong as it was for her brother (they just have different personalities) and I feel it would be helpful if she could read in the ml before starting with the ML.

Most of the things I listed above are things we have already established in our daily life, like my son was already keeping a journal in Spanish. What we have changed now, that we have agreed on, is he will write in it every day after dinner; before it was more when he had something special he wanted to write about. Or our read aloud routine is also well established, maybe that's what makes me feel I didn't do so much, because I almost just did what we have been doing for a long time.

But I did put new homework for my son for next week: write a letter to one of my aunts, read two chapters in a book in the ml, and write the journal every day. For my daughter I have borrowed from the library two games about learning to read, they are in the ML but I will take a look at them alone to see if I can do with her something similar in the ml. I think she's not so keen on "formal" teaching, so I am looking for a more playful approach.

Post by Alison on Mar 11, 2018 23:51:14 GMT 9

That's great you've planned some next steps. Writing it out can be so helpful in letting you identify exactly how you can improve things and holding yourself accountable. I hope it goes well this week.

Post by Adam Beck on Mar 18, 2018 11:47:35 GMT 9

That's great you've planned some next steps. Writing it out can be so helpful in letting you identify exactly how you can improve things and holding yourself accountable. I hope it goes well this week.

This is exactly right. When we articulate our aims and efforts, and commit to these in writing (particularly a commitment made to others, like at this forum), we stand a stronger chance of following through and generating progress. In this sense, it should be no surprise that a lot of happy success is being experienced by parents who maintain active threads at this Track Your Progress board.

Adam Beck is the founder of Bilingual Monkeys and The Bilingual Zoo, and the author of the popular non-fiction book Maximize Your Child's Bilingual Ability amzn.to/22XKuCt and the humorous novel How I Lost My Ear amzn.to/2EsjVRS, both available worldwide.

Post by Marta on Mar 20, 2018 16:42:07 GMT 9

The homework routine for my 9 year old worked beautifully. He managed all the things before the week was over and asked for more. We had a card game he got for Christmas that we still had not played so I asked him to read the game directions (in Spanish) and learn how to play it, then he could explain it to me and we would play it together and so we did. Also he was programming a game as a ML school assignment and I asked him to translate the game instructions he had written in the ML to ml so that also ml children could play his game, which he did. On Sunday he asked me to do a new homework plan for this week and also had suggestions on tasks.

With my daughter I have not started with the homework routine, but I have collected some ideas on games to play related to learning to read. I have the goal of doing at least one of them with her this week.

I downloaded some new audio books for the car rides that have been very successful with all three kids. And we've kept our read aloud routine strong.

My sister was over for the weekend which brought a lot of fun in ml for everyone.

Post by Carrie on Mar 23, 2018 11:36:15 GMT 9

With my daughter I have not started with the homework routine, but I have collected some ideas on games to play related to learning to read. I have the goal of doing at least one of them with her this week.

Hi Marta,

I think playing games is a perfect way to start. Even before formal reading lessons you can play games to learn reading skills. One idea is to play with rhyming words - phonological awareness is an important reading skill. You can easily search online for free printable rhyming cards in Spanish.

I also did syllable counting games. For example I wrote the numbers 1-4 on index cards and then got a stack of cards from a memory game. We turned over the memory picture cards one at a time, clapped out the syllables, and then put it with the correct index card to show how many syllables each word was. My son actually really liked this game a lot.

I taught all the vowels first, and then the consonants, making them into syllables with the vowels. So after we learned AEIOU, we learned M and how to read ma, me, mi, mo, mu. I think this is the standard way to teach reading in Spanish. It is very different than teaching to read in English.

I also found a lot of printables online that taught the letters but using coloring, cutting, pasting, etc. This is much better initially than pages that rely heavily on handwriting. I would teach reading first and leave the handwriting for later when their fine motor skills are more developed. Sometimes if I really like a worksheet but it has handwriting we will build the words with scrabble tiles rather than writing it on the page.

Post by Marta on Mar 25, 2018 22:54:42 GMT 9

Carrie thanks for all the ideas and links! We'll try the games you proposed and I'll also print the materials from the links. Thanks again! Among my 3 children, I feel my daughter is the one with the weakest Spanish and then somehow I also feel is the one that I do less with. She was until recently not so interested in longer read alouds (this fortunately has changed in the last couple of months so she's now getting more Spanish there). She's also not so interested in school-like activities so it's hard to get her to sit down and learn to read/write. That's why I'm trying to approach it with games. Then she's very very social and has a lot of friends in kindergarten that she wants to have playdates with all the time, which is all in ML. She has a couple of friends also with Spanish speaking moms but when they play they speak German between them.

I've noticed somehow that German is becoming stronger and stronger in our daily life. Both my son and daughter in kindergarten and son in school have found very good friends with nice families that propose nice activities on the weekends and/or afternoons, which is on one side very nice, on the other all in ML. Also my husband is talking now more in ML at home as before and I do catch myself sometimes answering in German to him. I've made a point to be more mindful about talking in Spanish to him and also asked him to talk in Spanish when we are all together.

Our week:- We finished our read aloud with my 9 year old, and with the 5 year old we are halfway through the third books of 5 Friends.- We watched a movie in Spanish both Friday and Saturday.- We were listening to the soundtrack of "An American Tail" in Spanish in the car and now the 2 year old is singing the songs all the time. - I played one letter recognition game with the 5 year old.- My 9 year old completed the homework I gave him in the ml.

We will be traveling for 10 days to Spain during the Easter break which is always a boost in the ml for everyone.

Post by Marta on Mar 27, 2018 3:14:49 GMT 9

Shoutbox

What's on your mind right now? Just type and hit "Enter" to share it here!

Angela: So sorry for your loss. She was a great woman. I hope you feel a bit better. Kisses from Spain. Apr 22, 2018 23:34:43 GMT 9*

Mayken: We visited a Loire Valley château yesterday. Our daughter got a kids' activity booklet and we parents got the regular tour booklet in French. She asked for one in German (our ml). When I later asked her why, she said "Because I'm a German-speaker!" Apr 23, 2018 23:23:36 GMT 9

Nellie: Haha love it Mayken! The best thing is - she is right!Apr 24, 2018 5:45:09 GMT 9

Mayken: My daughter's ml homework for this week included baking a cake - there's a cake in the story they read, and after each chapter there are questions and tasks, and the current chapter has the step-by-step recipe. She's to bring the cake to school too.May 1, 2018 23:48:48 GMT 9*

Amy: What a nice original homework! Makes such a change from standard homework, and I wouldn't be surprised if kids remember more from it! I like your bilingual school Mayken! Lucky little girl, and lucky Mummy! May 2, 2018 0:00:43 GMT 9*

Mayken: ml cake homework update: About half the class brought cake (8 out of 15), not all of them were the cake from the book recipe, but my daughter's was the most popular. (Maybe because we added food colouring and topped it with chocolate icing and smarties?)May 4, 2018 5:58:10 GMT 9

Mayken: I still have that to look forward to, Jana! Mother's Day in our ML country is two weeks later, and the ml teacher goes along with that date. (It was last Sunday in our ml country.)May 16, 2018 5:58:11 GMT 9

Flir: Adam, uh oh. Time waits for no one. I'm very sorry to hear that. Stay strong man, your kids are looking up to you to give them as much as your parents gave you once. Best wishes.May 24, 2018 20:11:03 GMT 9*